by Booth Stallings. Durant then excused himself and went to his bedroom phone to call Ione Gamble and ask her to lunch.
“I can’t make lunch,” she said, “but I’m free for dinner.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Back to London?”
“For a while.”
“Will you be coming back?”
“In about a month.”
“Call me,” she said, “and we’ll have dinner here.”’
“I’ll do that,” said Durant and ended the call with the realization that if he did come back to Los Angeles next month, next year or even next week, he wouldn’t call her and she knew that he wouldn’t.
As Durant passed Georgia Blue’s open bedroom door, he noticed her standing at the window, looking at the ocean. The envelope containing the check and the $5,000 in cash was on the bed, as if tossed there.
“You okay?” he asked.
She turned. “I’m fine.”
“I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
“Were you?”
“I think so. Thank you.”
“Goodbye, Quincy,” she said and turned back to the ocean.
Durant and Wu left to catch a plane to New York, where they hoped to fly the Concorde on to London. After Otherguy Overby packed, he phoned the Gemstar limousine service in Malibu and asked to be delivered to the Bridges Hotel, where he had booked a small suite for a week. If nothing interesting turned up at the Bridges, he’d try San Francisco. After that, there was always Hong Kong—at least until 1997.
After he saw Overby off, Booth Stallings walked into Georgia Blue’s bedroom as she packed her clothes into a small carry-on bag. He sat on a chair and watched her fold the gray dress she had bought at Neiman’s. After it was folded and packed away, he said, “How bad was it—at the inn?”
“I got to choose between Durant and Jack Broach and I chose Durant. But Broach knew I would, or seemed to, and just walked away. Or tried. He might have made it if it hadn’t been for Otherguy.”
“What did Durant say?”
“Thank you. What else was there to say?”
She looked around the room, saw nothing else that needed packing and closed the carry-on bag’s zipper. She picked up the envelope from the bed and stuffed it into her Coach purse. She then knelt beside the bed, reached beneath the mattress and brought out the small .25-caliber semiautomatic that she had used to shoot Jack Broach high in the left arm, almost in the shoulder. “Here,” Blue said and tossed the gun to Stallings, who made a one-handed catch.
“It’s what I shot Broach with,” she said.
“Looks like an ankle gun.”
“It is.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“That day I went shopping at the Gap?”
He nodded.
“I stopped by a bar afterwards and asked the bartender if he knew where a lady might acquire some protection. He happened to have a friend who delivered.”
“Want me to dump it for you?” Stallings said.
She nodded.
“Still want to run off with me and live in fancy hotels and drink champagne till the money runs out?” he said.
She smiled. “Do you?”
Stallings knew she would go with him if he said yes and he also knew it would end badly. So he said yes silently, but aloud he said,
“Not really.”
“I’ll be in New York,” she said. “If you need anything—or change your mind. Howie will have my number.”
He nodded and turned to go but turned back when she said,
“Booth.”
“What?”
“I’m still sort of stuck on you,” said Georgia Blue.
